excerpt from Your Reiki Treatment by Bronwen and Frans Stiene
Winds of Desire
As a boat on the water is swept away by strong wind and thrown off course, even one of the senses on which the mind focuses can carry away one’s intelligence.
Bhagavad Gita: Chaper 2, Verse 67
The human senses are sight, touch, hearing, smell and taste. A sixth sense is often called intuition and in Your Reiki Treatment it is referred to as the spiritual sense. These senses help humanity learn about, and navigate in, the world. In the past, those with highly developed senses were often dubbed as mystics and yet, humanity constantly uses these senses in daily life. Senses are the human antennae and as you grow-up you begin to intellectually understand what it is to use them and what their benefits are.
To cross a road you use your ears to listen out for traffic, your sight to see the oncoming cars and the path you are about to walk, your touch to move easily from the footpath onto the road, perhaps your smell to check that everything is safe.
You are born with a natural ability to use one or more of your senses more than another and at the same time you also hone separate senses depending on your life choices. Some of your senses are more responsive than others depending on how you use them. If you are a cook then perhaps your sense of smell and taste is very sharp. If you are a sculptor your sense of touch, your spiritual awareness and perhaps sight, might earn you your living. A data analyst uses her sense of sight to read (or ears to hear an audio tape), sense of touch to use a computer and taste to slurp endless cups of coffee.
At the base of these senses, which all practitioners and clients experience during a treatment (though may not all feel), is energy. Energy is expressed through our six senses.
When you begin to consciously experience sensations with Reiki you may not know what it is meant to feel like or how you should read it. No matter what age you are, the realization of an energetic experience may surprise you. This realization ensures that, although you may not be able to see Reiki, there is no denying that you are still drawing what you require during your Reiki treatment. As the Reiki moves through you, your senses become clearer and more acute. Do not muddy them with human interpretation.
Clarity of Senses is Balance
The ancients used to say, “When no thought arises, the whole world is clear. When the six senses move, the world is covered with clouds.”
Describing the Indescribable
Master Hsing Yun
Your responses are not the point of your treatment. Know that you are receiving a Reiki treatment, your senses are open to take their healing journey and your practitioner has made herself available to support you on that journey.
Some people may claim to sense and understand a great deal from a Reiki treatment. It is possible that this person is energetically advanced—if this is the case then the person will not be attached to the sensations. There is also the possibility that the person is so weak that she is being tossed to and fro by all that she senses around her. She is unable to control her sensitivity and is attached to the desire to “know” intangible things. This person is in a state of imbalance and needs to develop a stronger inner self and energetic understanding before treating others.
Bronwen and Frans Stiene are the co-founders of the International House of Reiki and co-authors of The Reiki Sourcebook, The Japanese Art of Reiki, Your Reiki Treatment, The A-Z of Reiki Pocketbook and the Reiki Techniques Card Deck. Bronwen and Frans teach in the USA, Europe and Australia. Visit the Courses page to find a course near you.
Comments 3
At the end, you say “this person needs to develop a stronger inner self and energetic understanding before treating others.”. Could you elaborate and possibly give examples of what such a person could do to grow into someone who has a strong inner self with an energetic understanding? I don’t think I have this issue, but I would like to stay in balance.
Hi Sonia,
When we are tossed around energetically or emotionally by our experiences during a hands on healing session or in daily life we are not grounded.
To become grounded we need to practice meditations like Joshin Kokyu ho which is taught in Shoden Level I, for example. This will help us to become more stable so to speak so that we do not get tossed around by the experiences.
I have just been following through the quote from the Gita Chapter 2 V.67. I have looked at several versions just to have a clearer idea as to what this verse is saying. It is verse 68 from ‘The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living’ by Eknath Easwaran, clarifies the point of becoming a clear vessel for channeling Reiki. It says, ‘Use all your power to set the senses free from attachment and aversion alike, and live in the full wisdom of the Self’. In Reiki terms we can replace ‘Self’ with Universal energy or simply energy. The precept ‘do your work honestly’ also comes into play here. For many years I struggled with a mantra based meditation. It was when I found Reiki that my so called mind, came to rest because there was nothing I had to a do. The concept of being a channel for Reiki or Universal energy was appealing. ‘I’ in the small sense did not have to do anything! It did not rely on me to pass an exam or the like, it simply worked despite my so called inner limitations. However, it is becoming apparent,the ‘work’ goes on all the time, in every thought and action we perform, that letting go of limitations is the key. Thinking how good I am at something is also a limitation. Practicing the breathing exercise, Joshin Kokyu Ho is a practical way of becoming grounded.